<
https://theconversation.com/what-do-we-lose-when-our-old-suburbs-disappear-222990>
"I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the
kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the
post-war housing boom, double-storey brick homes with Greek columns that
aspirational migrants built in the 1970s and half-crumbling, Federation-era
mansions once occupied by people whose names still appear in history textbooks.
Parramatta’s population is predicted to almost double in the next 20 years. My
street, like so many others, has recently been rezoned for high-density living.
Many of these houses are being sold to developers.
It’s a local story but it’s also a national one: suburbs near our cities are
disappearing everywhere along with the crucial histories of Australian life
they represent.
Australia is still a suburban nation: 70% of us live in the suburbs and this
figure is increasing with the rapid growth of “McMansion” areas in the far
outskirts of our cities.
Suburbia looms large in our imagining of ourselves, so what happens when we
lose those suburban streets whose houses are too young to be heritage-listed
but still old enough to tell an important story of our social and economic
history? As urban researcher Larry Bourne argued, we have yet to really write
the history of suburban life because we haven’t paid enough attention to
recording the private everyday experiences of people and their homes there.
So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past several months, walking the street
with suburban photographer Garry Trinh and talking to my neighbours about their
relationships with their homes before they are lost."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
